A penguin afraid of water?

WHILE his feathered friends dive happily through the icy depths, poor Kentucky the penguin perches hopelessly on his favorite rock.

Why? Because he’s afraid of WATER.

He refuses to take the plunge with his other 23 penguin pals at Blackbrook Zoological Park, in Leek, Staffs.

Staff at the zoo have seen 11-year-old Kentucky become a surprise hit with visitors at the park due to his unusual phobia.

Photo: News Team International

Source: Sun

Penguins get cataracts?

Ajani doesn't just have happy feet, he has happy eyes now, too.

That's because the 14-week-old African black-footed penguin, blind since birth due to cataracts, was able to see for the first time Thursday.

Nicole MacLaren, a veterinary ophthalmologist at Eye Care for Animals in Salt Lake City, performed successful bilateral cataract surgery on the penguin, a resident of the Tautphaus Park Zoo in Idaho Falls.

Source: Deseret News

Meet Pickles

A penguin chick hand-reared by zoo keepers after a family squabble has been named Pickles.

Keepers at Living Coasts in Torquay took in the African penguin chick when it became clear it wasn’t getting as much food as its older sibling. The chick lived the highlife for nearly 4 months, nestling indoors in a cosy den with a cuddly penguin toy for company. It returned to Penguin Beach once it was big enough to take care of itself.

Living Coasts senior head keeper Tony Durkin said: “Pickles has settled back into the colony with no problem at all."

Source

Weighing in

Penguin Sigrid stands on the scales during the annual inventory at the zoo in Hanover, western Germany, on January 12, 2009. During the last weeks, all 1,705 animals living at the zoo were weighed and measured.

AFP/Getty Images

Successful Penguin-Breeding Season at Sea World

Thirty penguin chicks have been born at SeaWorld in San Diego since mid-November, marking this one of the most successful breeding seasons in the park's history, it was announced.

Among the penguin babies are seven macaroni penguins, six gentoo and 17 Adelies, according to SeaWorld.

Since 1980, more than 500 penguin chicks have been born at SeaWorld.

Source: 10news.com

Fox kills 13 penguins at German zoo

A spokesman for the Euregiozoo in Aachen, Germany, says a wild fox broke into a zoo enclosure and killed 13 penguins living there.

The unidentified spokesman said the wild animal forced its way through the enclosure's nylon netting and slaughtered the exhibit birds this week, The (British) Daily Mail said Thursday.

Wolfram Graf Rudolf, the head of the zoo, said all 13 of the penguins were of the Black Footed variety and had originated from Africa's western coast.

Rudolf said the loss of the penguins, whose bodies were found Wednesday, was a major blow to the tourist site and its remaining penguin occupants.

<-----Disturbing photo. (Click to enlarge if you're not squeamish.) Source: UPI

Video: Penguin Receives Norwegian Knighthood

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New baby at Cincinnati Zoo

The newest addition to the Cincinnati Zoo is ready for their close-up. The zoo's king penguin chick, baby Kyoto hatched two weeks ago.

Both mom and dad shared incubation duties for 54 days until the chick broke through the shell.

Penguins do not have external parts like humans, so it's not clear yet if it's a boy or a girl.

For now the baby will be on display with its dad, in the Wings of Wonder exhibit. Next week Kyoto will move to the nursery display.

It is the second king penguin chick successfully hatched at the zoo. There are about two million king penguins in the wild but only 15 zoos in North America have them.

Penguin at Edinburgh Zoo to be knighted

We've posted previously about Nils Olav, a King Penguin living in Edinburgh Zoo, Scotland. He is the mascot and Colonel-in-Chief of the Norwegian King's Guard.

His current full title is Honorary Colonel-in-Chief Nils Olav, of the King's Guard of Norway.

The bird is to be given his highest rank yet at a ceremony featuring a parade of more than 130 troops from the regiment. Nils Olav will now be knighted.

The new honor has been sanctioned by Norway's King Harald V.

He has even prepared a message to honor the bird, which will be escorted into the ceremony with a fanfare by the King's Guard trumpet corps.

Captain Rune Wiik, of the King's Guard, said: "We are extremely proud of Nils Olav and pleased that an enduring part of the Royal Guard is resident in Scotland, helping to further strengten ties between our two countries."

Lincoln Park Zoo's new baby

The Lincoln Park Zoo's rockhopper penguin chick hatched in early July, and zookeepers don't yet know its sex. Sure is a cutie!

Photo credit: Greg Neise, Lincoln Park Zoo

(via Chicagoist)

Splash Zone: Penguin Cam

Live camera stream of the blackfooted penguins in the Splash Zone exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Monterey, California.

Watch the penguins

Join the gang

New England Aquarium penguin biologist Caitlin Hume introduces a Little Blue penguin, abandoned by its parents, into the penguin exhibit at the New England Aquarium in Boston, Mass., Wednesday morning, July 16, 2008. Hume, a penguin biologist at the aquarium, was involved in the hand feeding and home care of the young bird after the egg was left unattended by its parents earlier this year.

Photo: Stephan Savoia / AP

Source: Yahoo News

A penguin Birthday Party

The staff at Mystic Aquarium made a penguin "birthday cake" out of colorful jello molds, fish and squid to celebrate the gender identification of two male penguin chicks who were born in January. Penguin gender must be determined by a blood test that can't be administered until the chicks are 3 months old. The chicks and the rest of the adult colony shunned the cake in favor of fish.

Source: Hartford Courant

Video: Penguin Parade (Edinburgh Zoo)

Daily penguin parade at Edinburgh zoo featuring Gentoo and king penguins.



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Unexpected visitor for zoo penguins

A dozen penguins at a sea life center are being given special care after a youth vaulted the perimeter fence and chased the birds in the dead of night.

Keepers at Scarborough's Sea Life Centre were alerted to the intruder when his movements were picked up by CCTV cameras focused on the penguins.

He was seen chasing the birds around their pen for 15 minutes.

Centre manager Hayley Townsend said the penguins suffered badly from stress and described the attack as "heartless".

Ms Townsend said specialist keepers were watching the birds closely to see if they needed medication to alleviate stress after the ordeal.

Source: BBC

Pennies for Penguins

Lehigh Valley Zoo wants to add a flock of African penguins to its collection.

On Saturday, the Schnecksville, PA, zoo will host a ''March for Penguins'' walk-athon to raise money for the new exhibit.

The zoo plans to participate in the national Association of Zoos and Aquariums' African penguin species survival plan. The birds are considered ecologically vulnerable.

The walk-athon will begin at 10 a.m. Zoo staff educators will present a conservation program and activities at 11 a.m.

Zoo hours are 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Cost is $10 for adults, $5 for children ages 2 to 12. Info: 610-799-4171 ext. 224 or go to www.lvzoo.org

The Lehigh Valley Zoo is located in Schnecksville, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. Formerly known as part of the Trexler Game Preserve, the zoo is home to otters, kangaroos, otters and more.

San Francisco penguins have a new home

After four years of living in a temporary exhibit South of Market, twenty African penguins are settling in to spacious new digs at the California Academy of Science's newly built museum in Golden Gate Park.

The San Francisco museum will open to the public Sept. 27, but the penguins held their debut for the media Wednesday happily mugging for cameras and flirting with reporters.

"I really think we went and did everything right for this group of birds," said aquatic biologist Pamela Schaller, who has cared for the penguins for eight years. "I can't believe how comfortable they are already."

Comfortable, indeed. Not only were the birds nesting, frolicking, diving and happily accepting fish from Schaller's bucket Wednesday, they are also getting busy, ahem, copulating.

The birds' new home, which includes a 25,000-gallon tank with a surge system to simulate wave action, can be seen through a 26-by-16-foot acrylic window.

Source: Mercury News

It's all happening at the zoo

The Central Park Zoo has become the No. 1 hot spot for gay birds. Ten years ago, Roy and Silo made history as the zoo's first same-sex penguin couple by cohabitating and refusing female companionship. Their historic coming-out opened the floodgates. (In 2005 Silo walked out of his 6-year relationship with Roy for a girlfriend from California called Scrappy. The new heterosexual couple built a nest and hang out by the pool.)

In Faye Flam's new book, "The Score: How The Quest For Sex Has Shaped The Modern Man" curator John Rowden reveals, "We currently have a number of [penguin] same-sex pairs." And they aren't the only gay birds in the park - Flam writes there are plenty of homosexual geese and ducks also hooking up.

Penguins new home in San Francisco

It was moving day this week in San Francisco for the flock of 20 penguins, Spheniscus demersus, natives of South Africa and Namibia. After four years of living in a temporary exhibit while the natural history museum built a new $488 million home at the California Academy of Sciences, the black-and-white birds are now settling into their bright new space.

After the new museum opens on Sept. 27, visitors will be able to view the penguins through an acrylic wall at the end of a long hall of African dioramas -- scenes with stuffed animals and painted backdrops. The penguins, visible both preening on the rocks and swimming under water, will provide a lively contrast to the eerie stillness of the stuffed lions and antelope.

Source: Bloomberg News

Saving African Penguins

The African penguin is currently threatened and will probably soon be classified as endangered. The Seneca Park Zoo has one of the largest number of breeding pairs approved by the SSP.


Black-footed penguins are also called jackass penguins due to their braying call.

The Black-footed penguin population has suffered a greater decline in the past 80 years than any other penguin species. Until it was halted in 1969, intensive commercial egg collecting reduced the penguin numbers. Guano harvesters have removed a lot of the topsoil in areas where these penguins breed, leaving them less material in which to burrow. Commercial fisheries compete with penguins for food fish.

The biggest problem today is chronic oil spills from accidents and leaking tankers as well as waste from commercial boat traffic. These have polluted the waters off South Africa and contributed to the species' decline. Because of their concentrated numbers, the entire Black-footed penguin population could be wiped out by a catastrophic oil spill. This was nearly the case in 2000 when an oil spill came in the middle of the penguin's breeding season and thousands of chicks and eggs were expected to be lost.

Photo: Annette Lein